


Beautiful Maria of My Soul

by karrenia_rune



Category: Ocean-Born Mary (Urban Legend)
Genre: Diary/Journal, Episode: s07e07 Conversations With Dead People, Family, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Arc, Haunting, Sad with a Happy Ending, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29941932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Relationships: Ocean-Born Mary - Relationship, Original Female Character(s)/Original Male Character(s)





	Beautiful Maria of My Soul

"Beautiful Maria of My Soul"

Today the Roberts family moved into the big row house at the edge of fancy row houses in the wealthy established Irish-American neighborhood in New Hampshire, that before now, they could not have afforded.

It’s got everything they could have ever wished for in terms of a house: three stories, 3 baths, 5 bedrooms, fancy dormers, a big backyard for the kids to run around in and play; stained-glass windows in the sunroom that lets in plenty of sunlight for Dona Isabella’s orchids and herb garden.  
Granted, they would have to do something about that 50’s era green Formica countertop in the kitchen, but what new house did not have something to fix, and possibly do something about the gutters, too, but one crisis at a time.

Don Pedro figured that this was it; this was the big score. And now they would not have to live in a small house in the poorer neighborhood now that they were moving up in the world. 

Now Don Pedro could go to his friends and associates at the Royal Order of the Elk and rub it in their faces; a little. This was a major coup for their family; he was dying to brag.

For her part Dona Isabella was just as enthused as her husband; this was a dream come true. And anyone who ‘mattered’ in high society knew that this meant that they had ‘arrived’ as the saying goes.  
This meant that she could entertain in that big shiny, modern kitchen. She could invite other high society ladies for tea and book clubs and bridge. 

She settled on the settee with a hot steaming mug of chamomile tea and looked up to see her daughter Maria playing with a box of poker chips carefully sorting the red from the blue, the blue from the white. On the card stock were printed the capital letters ROTE and an elk’s head. 

Maria gave one to her mother; a mischievous look in her those big brown eyes and hands one of the red ones over.

Dona Isabella set the teacup down on a silver tray and plucked the poker chip from her daughter’s hands. 

Flipping it idly in the air, catching and pretending to do a coin trick, pretend to have it disappear from out of my right hand and into her left and have it reappear behind her left ear where the red ribbon that is used to contain that abundant cascade of brunette hair, just barely. 

She caught a glimpse of their reflection in the glass-enclosed case of the big grandfather clock that has been in her family since her great-grandmother’s day. 

She then chanced to glance over at the big wall mirror that came with the house. Suddenly, so sudden that the shock of it made her grasp on the poker chips loosen and let them fall to the floor and with a muffled clink into the pile of the patterned carpet. She gasped and ignored her daughter’s concerned look.

Dona Isabella saw her daughter’s reflection overlaid by that of another woman.

At first, Dona Isabella thought it was a trick of the light, or her imagination playing tricks on her. Or just a shadow of someone passing by outside of the house. 

Granted, her husband had mentioned that this house had had some odd happenings in the past and that gossips in the area that said that within the last 30 to 50 years ago these odd happenings, sightings had made it difficult for real estate agents to put the old house on the market even less to sell it because the house was haunted. 

Dona Isabella did not believe in haunted houses. That smacked too much of the paranormal and the only spiritual things that Dona Isabella believed were what she had learned in the church and her Holy Roman Bible. So, with that in mind, she got up and went over to the mirror.

Then she blinked and got a closer look.

She always thought of her as a sensible, practical woman; and that if one tried hard enough one could always find a practical explanation for everything, no matter how odd it might seem.

It was a young woman, who but for the difference in age and that her hair was a cascade auburn, with a distinctly reddish tint.

Her green eyes were set closer together, and her nose was narrower; could have been a picture of her daughter Maria when she was older, even though Maria's was more auburn.

Dona Isabella inhaled and exhaled, pinching the bridge of her nose with the middle fingers with her right hand. She did not use her left hand because her grandfather had held a very firm line about using one’s left hand, said it was bad luck. 

Don Esteban was always a big one about luck, both good and bad. She remembered when he would come back from the casino whistling “Beautiful Dreamer” smelling of whiskey and beer, bumping chairs in the dark so that he would not wake anyone else in the house. 

He breathed his last at home; saying it was all crooked cards and straight whiskey and fast horses. . She had loved her father with all her heart. It was reassuring to know that her daughter had had the chance to have a relationship with his granddaughter before he died.

For Don Pedro’s part he had said that of her father, and his father that river riders were more than likely built that way, quoting something that he had overheard at his gentleman’s club. “That if the sea is your lady, then sometimes that’s just how you rest at night.”

Maria joined her and said in a very quiet but determined voice that belied her age. “Do you see her, too, Mami?”

“Do I see who, chiquita?”

“The pretty lady in the light green and white silk wedding dress, “Maria replied as she reached up to clutch her mother’s hand. “She only comes at night and only when the moon is waxing and waning. Daddy says I am only imagining things.”

“You should listen to your Papa!” was Isabella’s immediate reflex response to this bizarre statement.

“I don’t think so. Maria replied with the logic of an 11-year-old child. “If I was only imagining things then why would Daddy say to stay away from her?”

“What?”

“Daddy sees her, too. Says she has a name. It’s Ocean-Born Mary and that’s she’s lonely and wants to give us a message, but also that it can be dangerous to listen to it.”

“I, I think that’s enough for one night, mi corazon. I think it’s time you went to bed.”

“All right,” Maria replied, but what about the pretty lady. So she’s so sad and she’s been such a long time alone.”

“No more, please. I will have a talk with your father in the morning, now you just run along.”

Maria nodded and did as she was bid.

**

The next day Dona Isabella sat her husband down in the parlor and said: “We need to talk.”

“About what?” Don Pedro asked a bit apprehensively as he sat down in a big armchair in front of the hearth. The fire in the hearth was not lit in this mild spring weather, but still, he could feel a bit of chill in the air suddenly.

She had intended to ease into the subject gradually, but now that the moment had come Dona Isabella figured it was best just to dive in.

“Who is Ocean-Born Mary?”

“Ocean Born Mary: It’s just a local folktale. It’s famous all through the upper North East, she was real once, long, long ago. An emigre from Northern Ireland one ship from Ulster to America and one the way their ship was attacked by raiding pirates who threatened to rob and kill all aboard.”

“My God!” Dona Isabella exclaimed, unable to completely maintain her aloof manner at this revelation.

“The pirate captain went down to the crew quarters to investigate, and he softened at the sight of the newborn. He said he would spare the passengers if Elizabeth would name the baby Mary after his beloved mother (or his wife). He gave her a bolt of light green silk cloth and asked that Mary wear it at her wedding. “

“What happened to Elizabeth?”

“As I understand it, Elizabeth died in childbirth, but Mary survived and the pirate captain, a father, took pity on her. He made her comfortable and allowed the captives to return to their ship and proceed on their voyage. And he did give Elizabeth presents, including the bolt of light green silk.

Mary’s father died soon after they arrived in America. Elizabeth soon remarried James Wallace, another Scots-Irishman. The Puritans who dominated the area viewed the incoming Irish and Scottish with a wary eye, but allowed them to settle in the area.”

“That’s all very well, but what I don’t understand is why this Mary Wilson’s ghost is haunting our house.”

“What?” Don Pedro exclaimed with a start, his Havana cigar that he had intended to light up and smoke for a while now lying forgotten on the coffee table in front of him. 

“Maria has seen her, so have I, and according to Maria, so have you.” As if she had caught her husband in a pointless fib.

“I thought you did not believe in ghosts.”

“I don’t but you do, apparently. So, I’m asking if you know of a way to rid ourselves of this specter, poltergeist or whatever she, or it is, or if not if you know of someone who can do it for us.”

“Isabella, please. Ghosts are not all dangerous, and it’s not like she is doing anything harmful to anyone in the house.”

“Harmful or not, I will not have ghosts in my home.”

“Do you want to hear about another legend associated with Ocean-Born Mary?”

Dona Isabella exhaled and pinched the bridge of her nose again, sighing in resignation, praying for patience. “Very well.”

Here’s another nutty Legend. “Here’s why the New Hampshire legend of Ocean Mary got nutty. In 1917, Louis ‘Gus’ Roy of Wisconsin bought a house that Ocean Born Mary’s son had owned. He then invented tales of buried gold and a tall, red-haired ghost that was probably Mary. He gave house tours and rented shovels to tourists to dig for gold in the back yard.”

“I hardly think that we should start putting it about that we have buried treasure somewhere about the estate.”

“I’m not saying that we should but a lot of people who have heard the story or variations of it, think that since Mary Wilson’s father was a pirate captain that someday she or an ancestor of hers will find all of that gold and become very rich.”  
“Rich or not, buried gold or not, that does not explain why she is here.” 

Don Pedro got up and went to stand beside her and rub small, smoothing circles into her back. “I can see how much this is distressing you, and legendary pirate treasure, ghost or not; it is the living that matter right now.”

“Do you really believe in ghosts, Pedro?”

“Yes, Lord forgive me, but I do. I shall call my friend Madame Ophelia in the morning and discuss with her about doing a cleansing.”

“What about our daughter?”

“What about her?” 

“Did you tell her to stay away from the ghost?

“OH, Oh, dear. I think I may have misjudged matters. The other day I found her staring raptly into the mirror or up at the moon, drawing in a notebook with a pencil, erasing and jotting down the different phases of the lunar cycle.”

“Pedro, I love you, but you need to fix this right away.” 

“I will,” he replied.

“Promise,” she asked, leaning into his chest and resting her head there.

****

Elsewhere

Maria had gone exploring in the house finding a chest tucked into a loose floorboard in her bedroom. The diary had become fascinating reading; it was as if those long-ago entries touched her in some ephemeral inexplicable way that she could not narrow down. 

“You were a girl of satin and gauze now you are a woman of ocean tides and mirror shards.”

Long ago I read those words of pirate captain Phillips, now, through various trials and tribulations gave up his life of piracy and pillaging on the high seas, trading muskets and cannonballs for plowshares and hearth fires. 

It continued, the pages were dog-eared and slightly water-logged but still very legible. There were a few pages missing in the diary, and Maria, having an active imagination of her own filled in the blanks where the entries lapsed or overlapped. _"I never thought that in my own middle age I would have a beautiful young girl to wander with me by lakes and rivers, hills and meadows, with flowers in your cascade of red hair.”  
Least of all unlike Phillip’s girl, My Mary would be my very own daughter._

_The earth turns towards the sun, the wheel of the year revolves, and the seasons come and go in their turn. And in that mirror shard of the lake reflecting the gelid moon in the sky, I think that this is the last time I ever saw your face. The fact that I still recall so vividly from the moment we met till the very end just as we had promised each other on in our wedding vows.’”_

Maria set down Mary’s diary. 

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue reading anymore, because the bees in the garden were twirling in the air like tiny jeweled puzzles of black on gold, gold on black.

Maria had a sudden longing to get out of this big drafty house and be out in the sunshine.

Maria got up and put her shoes on, went down the carpeted hallway and then down the stairs holding on the balustrade whistling a wordless melody, refusing to even glance at the big wall mirror in the parlor. 

Maybe she would later tonight, for according to her father, the ghost was lonely and just wanted to communicate its as yet unspoken and unheard message in order to move on.

Maria, despite her belief in ghosts in general, and Ocean Born Mary specifically, was not as fanciful as her mother sometimes believed her to be. 

Whatever moving on for ghosts meant. Where did they go? Heaven? Purgatory? Somewhere else entirely? She was not certain. 

Instead, she threw open the door and went out into the backyard garden to play with jack-straws and her hula-a-hoop and admire the flowers and the scent of freshly mow grass, and enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face.

The grass was lightly touched with dew and looked like shards of green and gold as she ambled and strolled through the back lawn.

**  
Later that evening, Maria went past the mirror again, and this time it drew her almost as if there was a magnetic pull in the air, drawing her closer, closer, ever closer until she nearly bumped her nose into the glass. “Wow!” she exclaimed, rubbing it gingerly, but there was a small trickle of blood and quickly clotted.  
***

Interlude Mary’s POV 

_If Fortune loved what was natural and right the birds of the glen would sleep in nests of gold. I cannot say that I much mind this unsatisfactory lacuna between the worlds of the living and the dead for it is hazy and often distinct like a journey on the road of dreams. A world that many may reach while in the deeps of sleep and then once you reach it, you see only from one point of view only and then cannot be traveling along the road._

_However, sometimes the two will converge and I reach a point where, where I am, a restless spirit, an unhomed ghost can see back into the world of the living and imagine what I was missed so much about being alive._

_In some ways, I relish these moments when whatever powers that be vouchsafe me fleeting glimpses into the world of the living. I do not know if this is meant as a kindness, or a cruel trick, or merely an unforeseen happenstance._

_I have heard that in the world of the living there are stories told of the untold riches of pirate's treasure buried somewhere on the property where I spent my life and where I died.  
If that is true, so be it. What use does an unhomed spirit have for treasure anyways?_

_If anyone finds it, they are welcome to it. It could be cursed, for all I know. Time passes here as slowly as molasses dripping from trees in the winter forest, or as slowly as a frozen-over river overflowing its banks during a spring thaw._

_Glimpses into the world of the living are becoming fainter and fainter, and if I am to complete my unfinished business I must find a way to bridge this gap; I must find a way to let go and move on._

****

Sometimes Maria would imagine herself in Mary Wilson’s place, what life on the high seas might be have been like, sometimes she would carry on long rambling conversations with Mary and would pause and then interject what Mary’s response might be.

Sometimes she would hear Mary reply to her rambling and her questions.

And if the corners of her vision would slip sideways and elsewhere that simply Mary’s way of trying to communicate. 

Otherwise, Mary most probably had not spent her entire time straddling the borders between that of the living and that of the dead, Maria opined. It stood to reason that she had been a real person, with very real and everyday concerns. 

***

The next day

Don Pedro was of two minds about the results of this cleansing ritual. 

After all, he had been raised as a devout Roman Catholic boy at the knee of his mother and father and had attended Sunday school as was expected of boys and girls of his old country.

As a young adult, he had drifted away from those teachings; and it was in these lapses which Don Pedro referred to as Lacunae: or holes in the way THINGS out to be that he had come across the legends of Ocean-Born Mary and her pirates. 

Pirates. There was something undeniably magnetic and fascinating about pirates, even when he rational knew that pirates were considered the wolves of the sea. Ocean-Born Mary’s legend drew him like a magnet seeking true north.

There just something in that beat in the breast of a young boy and a young man that excited him about the legends, in all of its various incarnations and retelling.

Don Pedro held the loose sheet of paper he had torn from the diary in his hand, itself read and reread over a dozen times since had found it. 

“I think I see her still, at the dark entrance of the hall one gas lamp burning near her shoulder. At her other, the glass of the mirror whose reflections shone as roiling troubled water.” 

“How is this cleansing supposed to take place?” Dona Isabella asked. “By Bell, Book, and Candle, I suppose?

“I will require something, some object that was dear or belonged to the departed spirit that you wish to contact,” Madame Ophelia stated.

Maria piped up. “I will get her diary!” and ran off like a starling taking off straight across the parquet floor of the parlor and then up the stairs, to her room, and snatched up the diary and held it close to her heart.  
Even as she did so, retracing her steps back to the parlor, Maria, knew that whatever her own feelings on the matter of cleansing the house of lingering spirits, had to be done. 

She had very much savored having Mary’s words for her own, but maybe the last message in the diary, that o matter what happens to the person or thing that you love; sometimes if you love strong enough that you eventually have to be able to let go and move on.

“It’s perfect, darling,” Madame Ophelia replied, carefully taking the diary and placing it on the table among her other ‘cleansing’ ritual paraphernalia.

“Should the child even be here for this?” asked Dona Isabella.

"It won't hurt, and the child has a connection to the spirit world," replied Madame Ophelia. "Shall we begin?"

“We shall,” Don Pedro stated.

Madame Ophelia began to chant in a language that had the vaguely familiar cadence of French with an overlay of Caribbean accents; calling on the Loa; and the elements of fire, earth, wind, and spirit to call forth any wandering spirits present within the house.

“Maria knows just as much or more about Ocean-Born Mary as any of us. I do not see anything wrong with her being here,” Don Pedro remarked.  
Even as the words were leaving his mouth a gust of chill air swept through the room, causing the window shutters to rattle, the candle flames to quaver and almost go out, and everyone in the room feel chilled almost to the bone marrow.

Dona Isabella unconsciously hugs herself for warmth and she felt more than saw Maria reach out to her and grab a fistful of her dress.

“There is definitely more than one presence here,” stated Madame Ophelia with aplomb, not mentioning the immense shadow at the female ghost’s back who had its hand on Ocean-Born Mary’s back.  
A brackish musty scent in the air began to overlay the more pleasant aroma of wood polish and cedar and the fresh spring breeze.

A heartbeat later, two spectral apparitions stood before them as if on cue to Madame Ophelia’s pronouncement. One was a female clade in long, shimmery green and white silk gown, her long red hair hanging down around her face like a fiery curtain. She had green eyes a shade slightly darker than that of her dress and she regarded them all with a wary but expectant breathless anticipation.

The other was a man, clad in the regalia of a pirate that once sailed the high seas back in the 1700s. This must be the infamous Captain Wilson Drake Phillips; who stood with his arms folded over his barrel chest and glared at all gathered in the parlor.

“Humph,” grunted Madame Ophelia,” not in the least ruffled by either specter. “Don’t you think you’ve disturbed these people long enough?”

The pirate captain opened his mouth and in tones that sounded as if they were dragged up from frozen mud before managing to come out as words, said: “We were here first.”

“Doesn’t give you the right to ..” Don Pedro began to retort before trailing off in unsettled muttering g.

“Mary, please tell us what you want, I know it’s been hard, and you must have been so lonely,” Maria interjected, but please know that I’ve been there for you and want you to be able to move on.”

Mary said. “You’ve read my diary, talked to me as if was there and present; even when I could not respond or acknowledge that I was there and aware. It is hard, but I think that is what will give me that final push to move on and cross over to the other side. Thank you, Maria,” Mary replied.

******

Conclusion

“I know that it had to be done, but Mommy, Papa! She was so sad at the end." She thought about. "Sad, but ready to go, I think."

“I believe that as attached as she was, there was an even deeper longing to move on.”

“Attached, how. To Whom?” Don Pedro asked, keeping his eyes on the medium and averted from those of his wife; suddenly v

“If it’s any consolation, I think Don Pedro is correct. However, I also believe that she was being held back by the spirit of Captain Phillips,” stated Madame Ophelia.

“So, everything’s going to be okay, now?” Maria asked anxiously. 

“To put it simply, mijita,” replied Madame Ophelia, mindful of the hopeful yet the pained expression on the little girl’s face, she said “Yes, it will.


End file.
